Viral

Ice Bucket Campaign Subsidizes Big Pharma

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The ALS Ice Bucket Campaign is Pretty Much Just Subsidizing Big Pharma…isn’t that wrong?

Ice Bucket ChallengeWhy can’t medical research donors act more like extreme venture capitalists and benefit from the huge commercial activities that result from their support?

So maybe you dumped a bucket of ice water on your head or donated to the ALS Association, where does the money go?

1) ALS Association takes in about $20 million a year, pay management $2 million/year (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3296) and give the rest for research, largely clinical trials (http://www.alsa.org/about-als/what-is-als.html)

2) The one ALS drug on the market ALS Association mentions is called Rilutek which from 1995-2013 was patented and owned by Sanofi.

3) Sanofi’s market cap is $138 billion with a 20% operating margin resulting in $30 billion USD of gross profit (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=SNY+Key+Statistics)

“we participated in this challenge at our vape shop in nyc and the turnout was huge, we felt like we were making a difference” The guys over at statenislandlawncare.com don’t just do grass cutting & snow removal. They hosted a fundraiser at the Staten in Staten Island to raise over 10k alone for the ALS.

If ALS is big enough of an issue for the world’s 5th largest pharma company to patent,own, and actively market it for 18 years, then why do regular every day people (and some billionaires and former presidents) need to donate to subsidize this industry?

Why can’t the ALS Association or other medical research donors get a piece, even a small piece, of the donor funds as equity ownership in the drugs?

When one hits and makes money – then they can put that money into further research and only ask people to dump water on their heads when the long shot cures they’ve supported don’t work out.

So, why aren’t medical research donors acting more like extreme venture capitalists to benefit from the huge commercial activities that result from their support and instead hiring PR and web marketing people to run internet stunts?

… Read the rest
Travel

Dating An Escort In NYC

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I was alone in New York and it was the weekend. I just flew in and it was the weekend. I was needing some company from a woman bad. So after getting rejected from a few ladies at this bar I decided to search for some escorts that would be able to spend some time with me sight seeing, walking around, get a bite to eat, maybe catch a show or movie and hopefully some drink, dancing and then back to my hotel for some dessert. Sounds like a plan to me.

The first agencies I called wanted a ridiculous amount of money for a girl to stay with me for the day. I remember when I was looking for an escort on the west coast it was the same but with a little patience you can save yourself a few bucks. I found http://NewYork5StarEscorts.com and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were actually quite reasonable. Another escort service NYXtasy.com as well as PlayPlaymates.com escort service are others I tried. This is now something that I could afford. I could execute my plan to the fullest and have some left over if we needed to extend it for longer.

I knew from experience that its best to tell the booking agent what your plans are and how many hours you might be prepared to allocate for the provider so that you don’t end up with a girl that has an appointment or commitment for later. I had it happen to me once before.

I didn’t let the agency know that I was interested in an overnight and the girl had to be at her other job early in the morning. Essentially cutting off my plans by several hours. And at that time of the night it’s difficult to find a replacement escort or at least one that will show up nice and fresh.… Read the rest

Life

Hectic Time Management

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While the rest of the world is on a 9-5 schedule you might not be and for you the rest of the world is hard to keep up with. While it might seem like a negative it is actually a positive as you can really get more done while the rest of the world is doing what everyone else is doing.

The best times of the day to get anything does is either early in the morning or late at night. If you are a mid day worker or night worker this can be perfect for you. Shopping is a breeze from 9-11am or 12am-on. No lines no parking issues. No problems period. The gyms are dead, the roads are clear and everything is a breeze.

Being able to juggle your time so that you are most productive is the key to managing your time. It makes sense that the real time savers are doing the things you do daily at a time when other are not also doing them. A supermarket run time is cut from 3 hours to 1 when you shop while everyone else is home sleeping. Your workout is much easier when the machines are available and there are no lines.

There are no hard and fast rules, but here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

  • If it needs to be done in the next fifteen minutes or so, task-switch. Otherwise, focus: When you’re in a constant rush and under pressure, it can feel like every little thing is an emergency. However, not everything is critical. If you have three tasks to accomplish and they all need to be done in the next fifteen minutes, try to rapidly switch tasks. Otherwise, focus on one part until it’s done, then move on to the next.
  • If you can, run it in the background while you do other things: Running a washing machine takes five minutes to start and it can do an hour of work while you do other things.
… Read the rest
Wealth

Retirement Planning

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The first step to retirement planning is to jump on board with one of your employers IRA or 401K account. If you don’t know if it’s available, now’s the time to find out. If you’re looking for a job select one that offers these as they are well worth it.They’re free and many times an employer will contribute the the account to make your savings really grow.

With each account type you can select some investment options. Some that re invest dividends (profits from the stocks), and some that invest in different industries. In the long term many of the options will yield the same growth, as most of the fund in the accounts get traded across many stocks that will move up and down in value creating a long term growth as the individual stocks in each account rise. It’s more complicated than that but at the end of the day all we care about is if our retirement savings account is increasing. Wouldn’t you agree?

A growth account is needed for retirement savings because a regular savings account that grows at a rate of 2% (or whatever the current rate is) is a rate that is less than inflation. What that means is that down the road, your savings at a 2% growth is actually worth less in the future. So one of the most important aspects of retirement savings is to look for a growth rate of at least 10% to keep up with the rate of inflation. Inflation at 10% means for example the buying power of your money decreases 10% each year. In simple terms, a loaf of bread is 10% more, or rent is 10% more and so on. That is how inflation calculates into your retirement.

 

It has been said that the safest of all investments is a mutual fund retirement account because the growth is steady.… Read the rest